Industry 4.0: Driving Sustainability and Growth through Paperless Production

KINEXON IT Project Manager Henrik Buck shares how paperless production can help you achieve both your productivity and sustainability goals.

According to the Sustainability Survey of the National Association of Manufacturers’ Manufacturing Leadership Council (MLC), over half of the respondents regard 4.0 digital tools as significant in their sustainability efforts.

With sustainability now seen as a key component of future competitiveness and growth, paperless production and automation are key parts on the journey towards net zero. IoT sensors and digital twins are considered among the most effective tools to drive sustainability initiatives. Today, we spoke with Henrik Buck, IT Project Manager at KINEXON, about how KINEXON’s IoT solutions help clients go paperless through Location-based Process Automation (LPA).

Henrik, how does KINEXON facilitate sustainable real-time automation?

Today’s production and logistics processes are complex and can require frequent updates and customizations. The KINEXON ePaper Tag is a game-changer for dynamic, sustainable, and error-free paperless production. It is one of the very few sensors that unite UWB locating precision with smart visualization and dynamic responsivity. With its smart e‑ink screen, the tag enables real-time transparency and unprecedented operational flexibility. In conjunction with the leading LPA software KINEXON OS, the ePaper Tag keeps workers on the shop floor up to date with next steps, warnings, and alerts and enables full traceability of all production steps for quality assurance.

How and why do users optimize production and sustainability with the ePaper Tag and LPA?

Generally speaking, there is an unlimited number of ways and use cases to leverage our solutions. Here are the Top 5 ways I see our clients leverage them:

1) Digitizing Production Papers and Documentation

The ePaper Tag eliminates unsustainable and error-prone paper sheets in complex production environments. Gone are the days of illegible notes and lost order papers. Additionally, the ePaper Tag allows the creation of a digital thread documenting all production steps, which has proven to be a huge benefit for compliance and quality control. For example, if material is placed on a quality hold, the e‑paper display allows for an instant update to all affected material with one click.

2) Eliminating Search Times with UWB Precision

The precision and immediacy of the ePaper Tag are a huge benefit for today’s reality in production. Each minute of delay or spent searching for assets is extremely costly. The ePaper Tag creates real-time visibility about assets and movements along the assembly and logistics processes and eliminates those costly search times.

3) Enabling Dynamic, Real-Time Process Control

ePaper Tags and KINEXON OS provide unprecedented transparency over status, movements, and location of assets throughout assembly or intralogistics processes. It also has the ability to easily and quickly update information after an engineering change, new revision, or drawing update and hence allows for instant updates when reference documentation is updated. This flexibility and transparency enable a multitude of automation features that allow for superior material flow management and eliminate manual handling errors.

4) Full Customization for Individual Needs

Each production facility has its own requirements and designs. LPA software KINEXON OS enables custom trigger configurations for real-time warnings, process automation, and production steps for individual and complex production sites and warehouses.

5) A Change Management Favorite

Introducing new digital technologies and automation solutions can be difficult and time-consuming. With its e‑ink display and interactive button press, the ePaper Tag not only facilitates faster processing, it also enables sophisticated automation in an intuitive way right from the shop floor.

Learn more about paperless production in our video.

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